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 After days of deadlocked meetings with President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced in a statement that the two sides would start a "dialogue process" Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama repeated his appeals for peace in the conflict that has left more than 800 dead since the Dec. 27 election.
But the violence continued to rage.
A gang of youths, who belong to Odinga's Luo tribe, dragged a Kikuyu doctor out of a clinic and beheaded him with machetes.
"They pulled the doctor out and then cut and cut until his head was off," said Sabat Abdullah, a resident of Kibera, a Nairobi slum where violence erupted following the killing of an opposition lawmaker.
Two gunmen shot Mugabe Were as he drove to his house in suburban Nairobi, police said, adding they did not yet know if the political turmoil had motivated the slaying.
"We are treating it as a murder but we are not ruling out anything, including political motives," Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said. "We are urging everyone to remain calm."
But another resident of Kibera, Teddy Njoroge, said houses were being set ablaze near a railway that generally divides members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe from Luo inhabitants. Flames and smoke rose from one area of Kibera.
"They have decided to revenge this MP," Njoroge said of the member of parliament.
Were was among a slew of opposition members who won seats in the December legislative vote, held at the same time as the presidential election.
"We suspect the foul hands of our adversaries," Odinga said on his way to Were's home, where dozens of protesters manned burning barricades of tires and uprooted telephone posts.
Kibaki condemned the killing and appealed to Kenyans to avoid drawing premature conclusions. In a statement, Kibaki promised police would act swiftly to ensure the perpetrators were dealt with severely.
Obama, a Democratic senator whose father was Kenyan, called on the leaders to seek a peaceful solution.
"Now is the time for all parties to renounce violence. Now is the time for Kenyan leaders to rise above party affiliations and past ambitions for the sake of peace," Obama said on Nairobi's Capital FM radio station.
In western Kenya's Rift Valley, where much of the violence is focused, thousands of machete-wielding youths from both Kikuyu and Luo tribes hunted each other down, burned homes, and clashed with police who appeared overwhelmed.
The Rift Valley is the traditional home of the Kalenjin and Masai ethnic groups. British colonizers seized large tracts of land to cultivate fertile farms there. After independence in 1963, President Jomo Kenyatta flooded reclaimed farmlands with his Kikuyu people, creating deep-seated resentment that exists to this day.
Kikuyus also are resented for their domination of politics and the economy, a success cemented by endemic corruption and a patronage system where politicians favor their own ethnic group.
More than half the 255,000 people driven from their homes this month have been Kikuyus displaced from the fertile valley.
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 On Tuesday, homes were set ablaze and thousands of looters smashed shop windows in Naivasha, Kenya's flower-exporting capital, located alongside a freshwater lake inhabited by pink flamingoes.
Five police officers fired into the air but were unable to control the mob of about 5,000. Naivasha's police chief tried to calm the crowd, but was pelted with stones and fled in his car.
Shots were fired from three helicopters at looters and protesters.
On a flower estate on the outskirts of town, a local reporter saw a mob of Kikuyus stone to death two Luos. Earlier, Kikuyus stoned to death a Luo man.
"We're trapped," said Rose Achieng, who fled with her two children when looters ransacked her home Sunday. She and hundreds of other Luos had sought refuge next to the police station, beside the road outside the country club.
Police, apparently worried they could not protect them, started ferrying them in trucks to the town's walled prison compound, where more than 1,000 refugees already had gathered.
"If you stay we will kill you," Kikuyus yelled.
In Kisumu town, where columns of smoke rose from burning homes on Monday, police took away one charred body.
"We didn't waste time, we had to kill him," said Stanley Ochieng, 25. He said they stoned the man, slashed him with machetes, then threw him to burn on their roadblock of burning tires because he was Kikuyu.
The U.S. Embassy said Tuesday that U.S. health research workers including some military personnel are pulling out of Kisumu to be temporarily rebased in Nairobi.
About 10 health researchers working on endemic disease projects for the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be leaving Kisumu, said embassy spokesman T.J. Dowling. He said no personnel were being evacuated from Kenya.
Human rights groups and officials charge the violence in Kenya has become organized.
"What is so alarming about the last few days is ... there's evidently hidden hands organizing it now," Britain's visiting minister for Africa, Mark Malloch-Brown, told reporters Monday.
He spoke after meetings with Odinga, Kibaki and their mediator, Annan, who announced the planned Tuesday afternoon meeting. Kibaki and Odinga had been asked to name three negotiators each to participate in the talks. They are under international pressure to form a power-sharing government.
[Associated
Press; By KATHARINE HOURELD]
Associated Press writers Katy Pownall in Naivasha, Malkhadir Muhumed and Tom Odula in Nairobi and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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